1-Hour Gallery Hop

Having a Saturday off is extremely hard and precious in my current work situation. Thanking my boss, I was able to join my volunteer team to clean up the storages, library and art studio of a public school in Queens during the day as part of the annual all-New York City-volunteer event New York Cares Day. http://www.newyorkcaresday.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=237516
The day was pretty labor-intensive but it was all worth it to transfrom the place for children who learn and grow in our community!

After our volunteer service was done, I figure that there would be about one hour left to check out some exhibitions at art galleries in Chelsea. Like I said, If I missed them today, I could not catch the same train in my life. So I hit the road with my super dusty T shirt and sneakers. Fortunately, I came across fresh mural paintings assumingly done by other NY Cares Day volunteer teams for another public school at the corner of 26th street and 9th Avenue. They are so vibrant...The students would love them for sure!


I made it to the last day of Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba show at Lehmann Maupin (no picture posted) and then headed to the first day of the solo exhibition of my favorite artist Folkert de Young (b. 1972, the Netherlands) at James Cohan. To be honest, I like his old work much better but these new works are doubtlessly well done and of course, these figurative sculptures are all made with styrofoam and polyurethane foam. This work in the photo is "The Tower 'Violin Player (Scene 3)'" 2007, 196.9 x 59.1 x 59.1 inches. Tall!
He chooses circus performers as the entire subject for this show being inspired by Picasso's Rose Period characters such as Family of Saltimbanques (1905). Ranging from war-themed violent life size sculpture to this more epic work, the artist states, "I want the public to become aware of the mechanism of sublime emotion, and how much we are being manipulated by mass media with this mechanism in order to influence our critical opinion."


My next stop was Sonnabend Gallery to see the show of large color photographs by Candida Hofer (b. 1944, Germany). Her large-size photographs are usually around 79 x 95 inches or so and it seemed like the works on view were made from 2004 to 2006. Some are taken in theaters and palaces in Europe. In her architectual photographs, I usualy like her library series but I was interested in this photograph looks least Hofer-like.. Why is the chandelier hung so low? Anyhow, you can view better examples of her known style such as gravity-free, white light filled spaces at this site:
http://renabranstengallery.com/hofer.html


There was a suspicious line across the street and I automatically joined the queue. Someone told me that today was the last chance to see the installation by Keith Tyson (b. 1969, UK).


I kind of liked the playfulness of his autobiographical side in his work however it's a bit too rigid for me.. It was fun to see this large scale installation work though.

So I made it to 5 exhibitions including outdoor murals in about an hour. Wow, it's not too bad!